ELF Little Black Beauty Book: Cool Edition + ELF Eyelid Primer

Since I don’t really have eyeshadows and I wanted to put into practice some of the things I learned from YouTube beauty vloggers, I set out one day to buy a smoky quad and a neutral quad. I had my eyes on ELF’s Flawless Eyeshadow quads, which cost P199 (about $5) here–until I saw their other eyeshadow palettes.The other eyeshadow palettes cost P399 (a little under $10) and contain anywhere from eight to forty-eight colors depending on the variant. I figured that since I’ll be paying P400 anyway for two sets of the Flawless Eyeshadow quads, I might as well buy one of the multicolor palettes so I’d have more fun. I chose the Little Black Beauty Book in Cool because of the wider and brighter variety of colors it offered. The Warm edition contained a lot of browns–what would I do with all those browns? The slight difference in shades would be negligible on my eyelids.

The box is quite misleading, as you will see. The actual product is much smaller, although of course this is an advantage as it’ll fit into my makeup kit.

I bought this along with the ELF eyelid primer in sheer and a couple of eyeshadow brushes from Marionnaud.

This palette comes in a sleek black case (made of cardboard, I think) without a closure. It contains 48 eyeshadows, a decently-sized mirror, and one dual-ended sponge applicator. All the matte ones are worthless; they’re chalky and barely show up. The shimmery ones are pigmented, except for the white shadow–it’s full of chunky glitter. Fortunately, there are more shimmery shades than matte ones, so I’d still say this is a good purchase, especially for those who are just starting out with eyeshadows and for those who want a lot of fun colors to play with without spending a lot. There are pinks, golds, greens, purples, blues, even oranges! I don’t actually know if I’ll ever go out wearing blue or orange on my eyes, but they’re so fun to play with.

There’s a lot of fallout when you use these shadows with brushes, especially with Marionnaud’s eyeshadow brush, which is rather stiff. I’ve therefore stowed away my newly bought eyeshadow brushes and have resorted to applying eyeshadow with my fingers. It’s easier, believe me–and no fallout!

The ELF eyelid primer does not help at all in making the colors more vibrant, but I was surprised to discover that it does prevent creasing, and it helps the shadows stay put all day. Once, at the end of eight or nine hours, I found that my eyeshadow didn’t crease or fade at all despite my oily lids. And no, I didn’t retouch. So the primer is another great buy at P129.75 (a little over $3)!

Now let me summarize the important points for you.

ELF Little Black Beauty Book (Cool Edition)

The Good

Affordable (even more so if you’re in the US)

Wide variety of fun colors

Shimmery shades (except white) are pigmented

The Bad

Matte eyeshadows are useless; barely show up on skin

Chalky; lots of fallout

Case has no closure so it’ll probably snap open in your makeup bag

ELF Eyelid Primer (Sheer)

The Good

Affordable

Prevents eyeshadows from creasing and fading

The Bad

Does not make eyeshadow colors more vibrant unlike other primers

—

If you are a beginner who doesn’t want to spend thousands on eyeshadows, this is a great product for you! Alternatively, you may want to try eyeshadow palettes from Ever Bilena or Nichido. The Nichido palette comes in a sleek black plastic case that can be snapped closed. I think it also contains 48 eyeshadows and is priced almost the same as ELF’s Little Black Beauty Book. In fact, I only bought ELF because the packaging was smaller.

Don’t forget to pick up ELF’s eyelid primer! Or you may want to try Artdeco’s eyelid primer–it’s only P450 and it seems like a good product based on blogger reviews.